This delicately rendered watercolour of the wing of a dead bird is just one of Albrecht Dürer’s numerous detailed studies of the natural world. A prolific artist, Dürer made paintings and prints of the biblical and mythological subjects most prized by his contemporaries, but he also gave attention to the minute and mundane. He detailed a patch of weeds, a seated, quivering hare, and a dead bird’s wing. To him, the beauty and order of the natural world reflected the very beauty and order of the Divine.

Here, with painstaking care, Dürer convincingly represents the soft, downier feathers closest to the bird’s body, the dense, mosaic-like feathers along the wing’s top edge, and the smooth, sleek primary wing feathers. We can count each plume and even see places where the barbs of the feather have separated slightly. Brilliant cerulean and turquoise contrast with warm brown and vermilion, creating a pleasing visual balance.

While this watercolour was not made in direct response to Psalm 91, Dürer’s fascination with the blue roller’s wing invites our own contemplation of the psalmist’s metaphor in verse 4: ‘He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge’. Some scholars have suggested that this should be understood as a reference to the cherubim wings that curved over the Ark of the Covenant (Kim 2007: 70). But the poetic image of birds’ wings, like the one Dürer depicts, is also specifically invoked in Deuteronomy 32:11 to describe God’s care for the people of Israel. Despite their apparent softness and fragility, feathers are uniquely equipped to shield a bird’s young from a range of threats. Indeed, each of the different kinds of feathers that Dürer so carefully paints are responsible for protecting chicks from the varying dangers of predators, heat, cold, and rain. And if God has already given so much attention to the sparrows of the field (Matthew 6:26–27), how much more so will he provide for his children?       

Reference

Kim, Heerak Christian. 2007: The Jerusalem Tradition in the Late Second Temple Period: Diachronic and Synchronic Developments Surrounding Psalms of Solomon 11 (Landham, Maryland: University Press of America)